Consumers desire fresh fruits, vegetables, floral items, and other products to be available for purchase all year round, even when those desired products are not in season or not grown or produced in the geographical region where that particular consumer lives. Food and floral growers, packers, processors, and distributors have attempted to satisfy the consumers' desire by shipping and transporting desired products from around the world.
One obstacle in shipping desired products around the world is preventing live insects, spiders, or other animals from getting into the desired products so as to prevent the spread of these insects, spiders or other animals to geographical areas where these insects, spiders, or other animals do not currently live.
The United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) is very strict about preventing insects from traveling to another geographic location within the United States and perhaps upsetting the balance of a local ecosystem. For example, there are strict rules governing how produce from geographical areas where fruit flies may exist can be shipped into an area where the fruit fly has been eradicated.
According to current practice, fresh produce is transported to a facility where the produce is fumigated using various insecticides and/or pesticides or irradiated and then sealed in closed shipping boxes, such as corrugated boxes, and loaded into a large shipping container. The container is then sealed after the shipping boxes are loaded. Once the produce is treated with gas, irradiation, or other method, such that no insects, insect eggs, or their larvae are in or around the goods, the goods must remain in a sealed container and the packer, processor, and/or distributor is unable to reopen the shipping container until it is shipped and reaches its final destination.
If the sealed container is opened, the entire process must be redone. Specifically, these goods must be transported back to the treatment facility, removed from the shipping container, fumigated, reloaded into the shipping container, and sealed again, incurring significant expense, unnecessary effort and delay.
Also according to current practice, the produce needs to be shipped in sealed boxes or other sealed containers to keep the insects out. However, sealed shipping boxes cannot be used in warehouse club stores, which have strict rules that require the packaging to clearly show the product. Because of this, there are certain fruits, particularly those that require fumigation prior to shipment, that currently are not sold in warehouse club stores.
The present invention overcomes the drawbacks and shortcomings of the conventional methods described above by providing a quick and inexpensive way to keep insects, spiders, or other animals from reaching the packed product even if a shipping container remains open, or if a sealed shipping container is opened. The present invention eliminates the need, should a container become opened, to transport the items back to the treatment facility, to remove the goods from the shipping container, to have the goods fumigated again, to reload the goods into the shipping container, and to reseal the container.
In addition to being effective in preventing bugs from reaching or traveling with the product, the present invention when used with open or vented produce containers, allows for ventilation, which is particularly important when shipping fruits, vegetables, floral products, or other products. With ventilation it is possible to maintain the goods in a controlled environment at a desired temperature and relative humidity level, and to allow the introduction and escape of gas to quicken or slow ripening.
Instead of sealing each and every box individually from insects, the present invention allows the use of packaging that may have open tops and venting cutouts, by causing the entire pallet-load to be sealed from insects. This type of packaging allows the fruit to be visible and available for shipment and sale in warehouse club stores.
Furthermore, the present invention reduces the amount of handling that some goods, such as produce, may need by eliminating the need for the inspection of the actual fruit by USDA inspectors to determine if unwanted insects are present.
The present invention also allows customers to inspect the quality of the fruit without opening each and every box.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of a preferred embodiment of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings wherein like reference numbers represent like parts of the invention.